In the past i have found myself with emulsions within the non-polar layer and i'm sure many of you know that this can & will create an awkward position for yourself in siphoning the solvent from the aqueous layer. Looking at some previous posts i was able to gain extremely useful knowledge on a number of ways to minimise these emulsions including

Washing the emulsion with a warm water bath

Using a vibrator , washing machine or any other device that will provide a high speed oscillation of the solvent

And adding Salt to the emulsion

Adding additional Lye to the solution

I thought that this might be interesting to share just incase anybody was having problems with emulsion and perhaps wanted a new way to approach this.

In my latter extractions a really simple but apparently effective technique i found to be so so helpful is to place your vessel down horizontally rather than vertically after shaking/stirring.

A multitude of times now i have ended up with emulsions within my glass bottle. On a few occasions i've extracted the non-polar layer and found the salting technique to be the most effective (i'm guessing depending on the cause of the problem).

So after a shake/stir i've left the mixture to separate only to find an annoying emulsion has formed in-between the two layers. What i do is simple give the bottle another gentle shake and then place it horizontally (on it's side) to settle. When given a few minutes i always find it to have sorted out my problem. Nowadays i just lay the bottle on it's side automatically before returning it to its bath.


Not being incredibly scientific i might just hazard a guess that it helps dissipate the emulsions because of the larger surface area the solvent has. Anyhow, this is by no means a sure fire way of getting rid of your emulsions but as i'd never read anything about this before, i thought that it might be worth mentioning to you all.

another thing to keep in mind. if you reduce the solution too much on an acid base extraction it can get too goopy and thick causing emulsion. this can be remedied by thinning it out slightly to make it more viscous.

O yeah, just to clarify that is with an STB tek . I have not tried any other extraction methods yet.